Wonderful 101 is fantastic, and it's definitely a Kamiya game through and through, but boy if it didn't have its share of issues that a lot have glossed over (then again they're the same crowd who believe Kid Icarus was flawless). You can tell it needed a to cook a couple more months in the oven and that it was made by someone with ADHD.
I feel as though all it needed was a better tutorial at the opening - and maybe a better demo that more thoroughly taught people. I think maybe they should have released a demo that led up to a tweaked Ohrowchee battle (001-C) -- its a good varied battle with on rails shooter, twin headed boss battle and free-falling climax that uses a few of the different formations. It looks and feels cool to play when you know what you're doing - so maybe something like that with a few tutorial prompts would have made a better demo.
I'm okay with all the formation drawing and stuff - the thing I think makes it feel a bit janky at times is the drawing a rainbow-circle-thing to recruit new heroes or make something happen in the level. Sometimes the camera / touchscreen relationship feels a bit fucked up there..
Genuinely good game though, really love the daft little Viewtiful-Joe-esque scenes and skits and the arcadey beatemup feel of it all
I ended up enjoying a lot myself, but mostly because it cost $30. There were a lot of frustrating moments that had little to do with how I played, as I was able to get the hang of things surprisingly quickly. Regular drawing became a breeze when I started doing directly with thumb on the touchpad. Some of the issues I encountered:
- Framerate being closer variable/unlocked-30 rather than a solid 60. This is what makes wish it had more time for optimization.
- An awkward camera angle that prioritizes the tilt-shift effect rather than an optimum, and full view of the field
- Said camera makes crowd-controlling waves of enemies unnecessarily frustrating, especially when start lunging at you from outside the wide-camera view. AI can be annoying in the wrong conditions.
- Said camera obscures perspective and with poor implementation of shadows can lead to frustrating platforming and item collecting (sometimes I'd be jumping trying to get some batteries only to realize I'm nowhere close)
- Many bugs and glitches were encountered, especially when facing bosses with a large team. For example getting stuck in the environment and having randomly redraw something to get out, teammates getting stuck or float around objects randomly, randomly ascending after a simple jump till I'm outside of view then falling to my death, getting stuck in larger enemies/bosses and missing button prompts. There are a few other issues, but they weren't severe enough to warrant a mention.
- While the drawing mechanics become a second nature down the road I was bored to tears after the first few brain-dead dumb QTE-esque drawing moments against bosses. There's a criminal amount of them. Did I mention how dumb they were after a while? It almost feels like I spent 40% of my time in every operation doing them, when the main draws should have been kept focused on actual levels where you have full control of your team and boss battles. It fucks up the pacing, IMO.
